Thursday, June 16, 2005 | |
Scientists are continually exploring different aspects of hurricanes to
increase their understanding of how they behave. Recently, two NASA-funded
scientists from Florida State University analyzed ozone levels surrounding
hurricanes. Their work could lead to better methods of forecasting
the paths of the deadly storms.
In their study, FSU meteorologists Xiaolei Zou and Yonghui Wu found that variations of ozone levels from the surface of the ocean to the upper atmosphere are closely related to the formation, intensification and movement of a hurricane. In studying meteorological data from 12 such storms, Zou and Wu noticed that over an area of 100 miles, the area surrounding each hurricane typically had low levels of ozone from the surface to the top of the storm. Whenever the hurricane intensified, the ozone levels throughout the storm decreased even more.
In addition, when Zou and Wu examined hurricanes using the ozone data, the eye of the storms became very clear. Because forecasters always try to pinpoint the eye of the hurricane, this knowledge will help with locating a storm's exact position and possibly lead to better tracking.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Hurricane
Center (NHC) is the agency that issues hurricane forecasts. Of the
12 storms analyzed, the ozone data and the NHC official report differed
on the mean distance between the estimated eye by less than 18 miles
during the most intense stage of the storms. When Zou and Wu added
the satellite-observed ozone levels around a hurricane into a computer
forecast model, the model greatly improved the predicted track that
the hurricane would take... The Tallahassee Democrat had an article today on this entitled Researchers link ozone levels storm, strength. Some pretty pictures showing showing examples of what's being talked about can be found in NASA's feature Ozone levels drop when hurricanes are strengthening. If the journal article were available online (via FSU's library), I
would have given it a look, but it is not. It does appear that
the FSU library has the journal on dead tree, however, so I may stroll
down to Dirac some time and give the article a read. Here's the
citation:
On the relationship between Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) ozone and hurricanes
J. Geophys. Res., Vol. 110, No. D6, D06109
10.1029/2004JD005019 The $64 question is: Do we get the data frequently enough to make it an operationally useful product for NHC? From the TOMS
webpage, it would appear that the answer is no, not really.
However, given the lack of progress made in forecasting storm
intensity, I think we would take anything we can get rather happily,
regardless of its limitations. Florida State, Weather comment []3:52:43 PM   trackback []  |